Google Begins Making DMCA Takedowns Public

Attention DMCA lawyers: Try to remove a web site from Google's index and you'll probably just make it more popular.

In an apparent response to criticism of
its handling of a threatening letter from a Church of Scientology
lawyer, the popular search engine Google has begun to make
so-called "takedown" letters public. DMCA-censored pages are now
two clicks and a cut-and-paste away from the regular search
results.

The full text of two new letters to Google, dated April 9 and
10, already appears on the free speech site
chillingeffects.org.
"I think it's great that they're calling attention to the way the
takedown provision can be used to compromise their search results,"
said Wendy Seltzer, Fellow of Berkman Center for Internet &
Society at Harvard Law School and co-founder of
chillngeffects.org.

Google is still choosing to take advantage of the Safe Harbor
provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows web
sites to escape liability for copyright infringement if they take
pages down in response to properly formed letters.

Only the name and telephone number of the attorney who wrote
the letters have been removed from the copies on
chillingeffects.org. Both of the new letters originate from the Los
Angeles law firm of Moxon & Kobrin, where attorney Helena
Kobrin has long been Scientology's standard-bearer against church
critics on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology and other online
fora. Kobrin was not immediately available for comment

The letters are also linked to directly from Google search
results. When results would have included a DMCA-censored page, the
results page now includes a link to the takedown letter that
resulted in the page being removed. A search this morning for
site:xenu.net scientology produced the message:

"In response to a complaint we received under the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 8 result(s) from
this page. If you wish, you may
read
the DMCA complaint for these removed results."

Failing to act in response to a DMCA takedown letter is not
against the law. "They can always choose not to take advantage of
the safe harbor," Seltzer said. However, only by complying with the
letter and taking pages out of their index can Google escape a
possible copyright infringement lawsuit.

Finally, Google has expanded its
DMCA page to
include instructions for Counter Notification under the DMCA. A
webmaster who believes that a non-infringing page is being unfairly
censored can
write
the proper legal incantations and have the page put back
into the index.

Google is then required to forward this Counter Notification
to the original notifier, and then put the page back in the index
"not less than 10 or more than 14" days after Google receives the
Counter Notification. If your site is pulled out of Google and
you're confused, chillingeffects.org has
a
web form that will generate a correctly formed Counter
Notification.

I'm not talking about this particular case, but I think publishing DMCA letters that are legit just sounds like a tactic to stop trademark owners from complaining and protecting their marks! Google should be protecting trademark owners. This sounds like a punishment just so Google has less work to do! I don't think this makes Google look good at all. I've been an advertiser with them for years now and I'm disappointed that they would not respect trademark owner's privacy. Not right. I definitely do not trust Google anymore.

Don’t be surprised to read headlines about the Scientology Cult members committing suicide while waiting for the spaceship to arrive. This is another sad story that’s likely to end up like the Jim Jones saga hurting many families who's children have been brainwashed.

Yes but it's not Google's or any other company's job to protect your children from bad content ... People keep forgetting that they're parents and it's their duty to watch over their kids and educate them, as for Google's decision to make the take-downs public, it's a great idea because the internet was created to be a real "free zone" (unlike the real world) not some place where everything is censored/controlled by companies and/or governments, but somehow the concept got lost and we lost the internet (where we have the access only to the information they want us to know, just like in the real world).

I would like to say a few things to everyone who is bashing Scientology:
1. Scientology is a religion, as much as Christianity or anything else.
2. If you bash the obvious deficits in Scientology, you must also closely scrutinize the other religions in order to remain impartial.
3. Christianity seems like the long left over remnant of a cult (following a single man around, abandoning everything else, consistency errors, etc.) and if people want to follow either Scientology or Christianity, that is their personal choice. Everyone's individual choice for religion is just that: their individual choice.
4. Stop being traditionally biased pricks.
Just to note, I'm not a Scientologist.
-xitrium

2) "if you bash the obvious deficits in scientology, you must aslo closely scrutinize the other religions in order to remain impartial." Uh..who claimed to be impartial? Who made you ruler of impartiality? and..i will bash any religion, any way I can. Thank you!

3) why is it that everyone says "be impartial", be careful what you bash..and then "see this religion is just as idiotic. If you trully want to remain impartial then you must either choose a side or shut up. full stop. contradictary? hey.. im just repeating what your saying.

4) ill stop being a "traditional biased prick" (whatever that means..everyone has biase) ..when you stop being a narrow minded "all traditional thinking is crack" modern thinking, stuck in a box a$$hole.

Lafayette did a reasonable, albeit bloated job on this novel (I haven't seen the movie, and probably won't). He didn't get so lucky on his ten-volume series (it got boring real quick). Apparently, Scientology is the result of LRH forgetting where fiction ended.

Way to go, Google. Not just for the larger legal implications, but for the immediate issue of keeping the truth about scientology readily available to those who are smart enough to search for it. I think the DMCA is an immoral, stifling, disgusting, money-driven, business-forward, consumer-damning pile of putrid, vile trash. Scientology is even worse. =/

Don’t be surprised to read headlines about the Scientology Cult members committing suicide while waiting for the spaceship to arrive. This is another sad story that’s likely to end up like the Jim Jones saga hurting many families who children have been brainwashed.

You're not the first person to come up with this idea... if enough of us band together, it's doable... we could even build our own covert operations units to take out *ssholes like Hollings. I'd volunteer. ;)

Copyrigt does not depend on the presence or absence of a copyright notice, and hasn't since 1978 (in the United States, longer in most other countries).

Now, something that is copyrightable becomes copyrighted as soon as it is "fixed" - record in any type of recoverable media (traditional or electronic).

For things with economic value, the copyright notice is still significant, in that it allows the copyright holder more options in pressing a lawsuit and limits possible aspects of defense.

There's a strong argument that providing these DMCA letters is permissible under the "Fair use" rules:

1) the "purpose and character of the use" is noncommercial and informative of a public controversy

2)"the nature of the copyrighted work" - such DMCA letters are not exactly prototypical works of authorship, rather their limited copyrightabilty is incidental; they are essentially "functional" rather than "expressive"

3) publishing essentially all of the letter tends to factor against "fair use"; however it's not a bar, the various factors in a "fair use" analysis are weighed collectively and complete copying has been held top be "fair use" in some circumstances

4) because there is essentially no general commercial market for such works as DMCA letters, the 4th statutory element of "fair use" analysis strongly favors a determination of "fair use" - "no harm, no foul", where "harm" is *economic* harm due to lost ability to commercialize the copyrighted work.

IANL but I don't think this works. There are legal precedents involving people who published collected letters where the author didn't want them published. The courts found that the recipient owned the letter and could publish if he wanted to. These letters had an implicit copyright that all written work has.

Now if you were to write a license agreement on the envelope stating that you were not allowed to publish the contents and opening the envelope signified agreement...............

If they send it via registered mail, then they have legal proof that you have recieved it. If you recieve it and don't open it, you're still effected by it's contents. Given that, I don't know if it's legal to put any binding agreement into the opening of the envelope since it's a legal issue that they must be ABLE to read the document (hence the registered mail) for the contents to be in effect.

Easy Solution: Place the letter and a pound of semtex in another envelope, put a trigger on said envelope (rigged to go off upon opening it)... send it back to them, same day airmail. If they want to play rough, they shouldn't be surprised when someone plays rough back. :)

If you were sent a letter that said that would you open it? I'd mark it return to sender, and drop it in the nearest mailbox, or put it in a larger envelope with a note that if they'd like me to read their letter, they may send it in a diffently-marked container.

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